Photo via flickr by A Hermida

Tune into DNA-radio. Two German biotech experts are translating the entire human genome to audio files and streaming it on the web.

After creating pictures from the human DNA code, the DNA Rainbow group converted the data to audio. The idea is quite simple: every base is read and broadcasted, converting it to a color.

“With DNA-Radio, we don’t visualize the chromosome, we sonify it and have now completed a full audio-visual DNA representation of human chromosomes. It’s like radio, everybody listening hears the same code at the same time, the audio never gets repeated.”

It will take about 23.5 years or so until all code has been distributed over the internet.

via KurzweilAI.net

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In the 1970s, Hans Jenny, artist, scientist, inventor and designer conducted sound experiments to see the mathematical patterns hidden in nature. His work is called Cymatics. Remarkably, Jenny’s research showed that the geometric patterns we see in nature are produced by sound—that the geometric patterns we see in nature are really sonic equations. Sound is the blueprint of form. Essentially, Jenny exhibited that all design is really frozen music.

Jill Purce, sound healer and Lee Smolin, theoretical physicist, discussed how sound creates form with the Sputnik Observatory:

I saw the patterns produced in matter, in vibration, that was the result of the Swiss doctor, Hans Jenny. He did a lot of very extraordinary experiments using all kinds of different form and matter. He used different liquids in different viscosities and different sounds, different forms of powder, lycopodium powder, that’s a very fine spore and magnetic substance, and he put them on vibrating plates and then he subjected them to different kinds of sounds. These chaotic films, heaps and piles—gradually with the introduction of sound—take on and stabilize into these extremely complex sonic patterns, which are indeed the patterns we see around us in nature. It was seeing this that made me realize that you can really understand the coming into being of form through sound in this way.
—Jill Purce, Sound Healer, sptnk, 0:22:43:08

If you have a drum and you hit the drum, you hear some frequency of vibrations from the drum. Now suppose the drum is stretched in some strange shape, then the sound of the drum would change. You could ask the question, “If you heard the drum, could you reproduce the shape of the drumhead?” The answer turns out to be, “Yes, there’s a way to reproduce the shape of the drumhead from the sound of the drum.” The sound of the drum is some spectrum of vibrations.
—Lee Smolin, Theoretical Physicist, sptnk, 0:17:43:00

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Sound is:

about
above
across
after
beneath
beside
between
beyond

The power of sound is being explored by artists, architects, authors, designers, engineers, entrepreneurs, health practitioners, inventors, philosophers, physicists, scientists and thinkers around the world.

Futurist and author Kodwo Eshun in a conversation with Sputnik Observatory:

“The futurists invented the idea of lines of force; the idea that any object radiates a field of attraction and a field of force around it. They really understood acoustic space very early on. When (Marshall) McLuhan talked about acoustic space, what he meant was a space that you hear, not a space that you see. So that space was more in the round, because humans can hear behind their ears and hear around corners, we can hear in 360 degrees. You can hear behind your head. You have infinitely peripheral hearing. McLuhan was fascinated by this because he thought that it meant that if you could understand acoustic perception, then you could see a totally new way of understanding the world.” —Kodwo Eshun, Author, More Brilliant Than The Sun, Architectronics, sptnk, 0:50:20:23

Photo via flickr by jah~

Music of the Spheres was first presented by the Babylonians and then popularized by Pythagoras. Pythagoras and his students are also known for making outstanding contributions to mathematics, including irrational numbers. Pythagoras stated that all relations could be reduced to number relations, influenced from observations in music, mathematics and astronomy. Music of the Spheres states that each planet emits a sound, a musical note, based upon its relation to the Sun. Pythagoras suggested that if all planets were played together at the right frequency, a glorious harmony would sound.

Photo via flickr by Rickydavid

String Theory has been postulated as the Unified Theory that Einstein sought to achieve during the last thirty years of his life. String Theory states that the universe is composed of tiny vibrating strings with wave patterns similar to those made by common violin strings. Although not visible to the eye, these strings are said to lie deep within matter. String Theory states that all things are made out of vibrating energy.

String Theory says that deep inside any of these particles, electrons, quarks, and some of the other more exotic species of particles, inside of each of these is something else. It’s a little filament, a little filament of vibrating energy. It kind of looks like a string, and that’s where the name of String Theory comes from. And the key is that we don’t hear these different patterns as different musical notes. Rather we see them as different particles. So an electron is simply a string vibrating in one pattern, like an “A” flat. A quark is a string vibrating in a different pattern, a “B.” In a sense then, it’s as if everything in the universe is kind of musical. It’s like the Music of the Spheres injected into the structure of the universe at a microscopic level.
—Brian Greene, physicist, 2001 Sputnik conference, manTRANSforms, 0:03:22:13

When we see the universe around us we see atoms, subatomic particles of all kinds. Today we realize that all these subatomic particles with all these Greek names can be summarized as nothing but notes, musical notes, on a vibrating superstring. The notes on the string correspond to the subatomic particles like electrons and quarks. The melodies of the string correspond to modern chemistry – all the chemistry of dna and proteins are melodies played out on the string. The universe is a symphony of superstrings.
—Michio Kaku, physicist, from a conversation with Sputnik Observatory, 0:29:17:04

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A plant has openings on the underside of its leaves called the stomata. Sensitive to changes in the environment, the plant will react by opening or closing its stomata. Sonic Bloom is a new system launched by research scientist Dan Carlson, that combines sound and foliar spray to enhance plant growth.

According to Sonic Bloom, plants extract nutrients directly from the air through natural resonance after their stomata have been enlarged by bird sounds. Sonic Bloom mimics these birds sounds with ultrasonics made up of harmonic frequencies which stimulate the tiny stomata pores on plant leaves to open. When these pores open, the plant is able to increase its uptake of nutrients by over 700 percent!

Carlson spent many hours in the University of Minnesota library, studying plant physiology. Struck by the idea that certain sound frequencies might help a plant breathe better and absorb more nutrients, he experimented with various frequencies until, with the help of an audio engineer, he found one range that was consonant with the early morning bird chirping that helps plants open wider their stomata, or mouth-like pores. Carlson has developed a special organic spray to apply to the leaves along with the sound that induces stomata to open. Even in poor soil, Carlson reasoned, plants could be well nourished with a foliar spray containing the right combination of elements.

To develop such an effective nutrient solution took Carlson 15 years of trial and error, experimenting in labs throughout the country. To find the proper balance required endless testing with radioactive isotopes and Geiger counters to trace the elements’ translocation from leaves to stems to peak to roots. Among the first natural substances used was gibberellic acid, naturally derived from rice roots, needed by every living plant.

Eventually Carlson included variety of elements derived from natural plant products and from seaweed; he also added gibberellic acid and growth stimulants, altering the surface tension of the water base to make it more easily absorbed. The end result was Sonic Bloom.

Photo via flickr by csklein

Contrary to our conscious perception, plants do move…be it ever so slowly. sLowlife exhibition offers a window into the world of plants. It accelerates the time-scale of plants into our own frame of reference, speeding up their everyday lives to a pace that resonates with our own. For example, Sun Dance reveals sunflower seedlings as they grow and “reach” for the light, wriggling wildly as if in celebration of life. But such “festivity” is not confined to sunflowers; most plants exhibit this motion to some degree. When seedlings emerge from the soil, they search for the orientation that provides the greatest sunlight. To remain upright as they grow, they correct for the “leaning” that results from being temporarily imbalanced in the direction of light. The wobbling, circular, swaying movement (called nutation) facilitates exploration of their immediate environment.

Photo via flickr by fragmented

In the recent Wired Magazine 17.08, contributing editor David Kushner lets the world know what to expect from Will Wright’s new species startup, Stupid Fun Club. It’s reported that Wright and his SFC pals have tinkered with everything from fighting automatons to AI experiments. “We taught the robots to be social,” Wright says. “They can converse, and it was fascinating to see their personalities interacting.” For Wright, playing geek Frankenstein goes hand in hand with making games. “Building robots is not that different from programming Sims,” he says. “On the other hand, a robot may crash into you.”

via Wired Magazine

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By listening to termites with microphones buried deep inside mounds, the aim is to develop rapid prototype technologies to mass-manufacture future green habitats.

“Termites are the best examples of housebuilders in the natural world,” says Rupert Soar, a builder-turned-scientist. The mounds take in fresh air and expel waste gases through walls that “breathe,” he explains, and if humans could replicate that in our buildings, it would significantly reduce the need for air conditioning and other electricity-guzzling ventilation systems.

Via Financial Times